Sunday 29 January 2012

Back to Basics

Whilst sorting out some papers at the workshop I came across some of my 2D work from college. These three photo's show the different perspectives that I am interested in.
When marks are viewed at any size and from any distance they become abstracted and form their own patterns.
I clearly remember taking this first photograph, it's in Upton and the field was freshly ploughed ready for planting with potatoes. To get the shot at this angle I was virtually laying down on the road, with a five yr old daughter in the car screaming because I had moved out of sight.
The silk screen print on the left came from a mash up of macro photographs taken from the tyre tracks of many different farm vehicles.
The background was originally made from many layers of ripped, torn and generally distressed tissue paper.
At one time I was making a lot of these prints and was almost at the point of combining printing with ceramics.
As my work is based on the marks made by man on the land around me, and to see those more clearly I decided that I needed a different viewpoint, to be above the fields. After contacting Norfolk Flying Club I was offerred a 30min. flight in a twin seater airoplane. I'm not especially scared of flying, but this plane was tiny! The door was up and over the roof and there was rather too much Gaffer tape in the cockpit for my liking.
However, after we had got up to around 700ft. and started to travel away from the Airport, past the houses and go out over the fields I soon lost all fear, well, some of it anyway.
I became so absorbed in looking at the patchwork of fields and Broads beneath me that the half an hour passed very quickly.
The photographs, drawings and print work that I made over a decade ago now still inform my work on almost a daily basis and I am retrospectivly grateful for being hassled into producing so much of it.

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